A Good Relationship
by neko-chan1
Summary: [ColettexLloyd, KratosxLloyd] A cold balcony, a good relationship, a son, and a kitten. Not very well-written, though. Read at your own risk.


A Reflection of Loving

Okay, I seriously do NOT know what is up with this story. It is totally OOC attempting to be totally IC, and mostly fueled by my wanting KratosxLloyd stuff to happen regardless of their respective sexual orientations and current (and future) partners. My only excuse is that it's supposed to run high on emotions, and be very much a feeling-based thing. (Much like my crazed-yaoi-fangirlism.)

Well, that being said, sit back and try make your way through this muddle! I really appreciate it…

At one of the many balconies he had doubtless stood at in his lifetime, Lloyd stared at they sky and thought about love. He wasn't very sappy or melodramatic about it, but then again he had it, so he felt there was no need to indulge. His love for Colette was quiet, after all. It was the sort of love that is calm and placid, with a confidence all of its own.

And it was so different from what he used to imagine love, at least his kind of love, to be. No, he had never wanted the spitfire romances Xelloss enjoyed or Sheena's doggedly persistent way of tending to his heart with all the violence in her, but he had thought it would be a bit like Genius' infatuation with Presea. The kind of love that blinds, the kind of love that makes one childish, whether or not one was a child being immaterial.

But his own love was love that had completely avoided being a romance. Colette was a child, and he had simply, like it was natural (and after talks with his friends had decided _was_ natural), taken her hand and led her into living. There had been no issue of trust, for Colette had always gazed up at him the way a young bird gazes at its mother, with a kind of alturistic, all-pervasive faith that made everyone's protective instincts go into overdrive. There had been no issues of the more sordid kind, either, their relationship had bypassed that – he had been overwhelmingly shy, and Colette was completely unawares. She had blushed a little and he had returned them with sheepish smiles, but Colette had always been ready for the joking that came with friendship. He loved that about her – her way of saying "suki."

She had matured, and then she had complimented him, idealistic and yet filled with awareness of the world on whose soil she trod, brilliant as the sun and shining from within with innocence and warmth. Those were not the things he saw everyday, of course. It was a good thing.

He might never understand her in her entirety, but he would remember her hand on his arm, the warm pressure of her head on his shoulder, fine golden hair tracing flaxen paths down his side. He had moved to clasp her hand instead, and laid his own cheek against her, her unaffected sweetness making him want so much to do something for her in return. Her attempts to cook, her laughter as he failed to catch the _kendama_, her brief unhappinesses and lasting smile – his love encompassed such things.

The wind suddenly seemed bitingly cold to him, and he reflected that Colette had not come out to see him this time. She was inside, maybe concerned about him or perhaps laughing with Sheena and Refille, saying brightly "Lloyd will come in when he feels he needs to…"

Such assurance, as though they had been together for a hundred years past and future.

They had fallen in love so naturally they had never spoken of it, because they could assume things about one another, and so it seemed he was suddenly feeling the weight of it for the first time. So beautiful, so precious, such warmth on a freezing balcony. And even as its fullness embraced him and he rejoiced, it was also crushing, all-encompassing, leaving him no room to be separate. He was full, suddenly, so full he had no space for any other considerations besides Colette's smile and the whisper of her hair.

_"Soshite, ishoshii-sa ga hirogareteyuku…"_ A love so pure, he had to gasp in pleasured surprise. So guiless, he could know all there was to know in the world and look at each day as though through the eyes of a newborn babe. So bright, he was blinded for a moment by its sheer brilliance.

He felt a slight pinching at the sides of his eyes, and a cold, biting kiss aginst his skin. Lowering his head, he tried to ride out the emotions, the way they swarmed until he no longer knew what was positive or negative, could no longer berate or congratulate himself – he had become part of of feelings, for a brief moment, instead of his feelings becoming part of him.

Was Colette feeling the same way now, too? It wasn't possible – she would had come to him by now, if it were so, slipping her soft palm against his fingers. His emotions had halted only him, his love for her had beome instensely personal for this moment, and his heart rippled. Was this something his love would demand of him, even if Colette herself did not ask for it? He felt, so strongly, so greatly, now.

Could he deal with this? For he felt like he might explode.

"Lloyd?"

That was _not_ Colette, that's for sure.

"What are you doing out here, Kratos?"

The other's eyes narrowed very slightly, but both men had gotten used to the situation between them being confrontational.

"You don't normally come out to the balcony." His tone sounded curt even to himself, and his heart told him that yes, he had wanted it to be Colette, connected to him by heart and soul, wanted her presence to make the emotions boiling inside him now real. She had been a creature made to answer his dreams with dreams of her own, and she would have known how to capture the stardust of his feelings. And the loss ached.

"Colette asked me to see that the house cat didn't run out here." A pause. "They are all playing cards downstairs."

He felt bitter, suddenly. "Like I believe that. Since when did you chase after kittens?" He couldn't really look properly at the other after that, but suddenly he had been flung back into reality, and he felt off-balanced, dizzy with after-images. His beautiful angel would have made it real, she would have been pliant against him, her eyes drinking in his endearments, softly lying that she was cold so that they could embrace.

But now he was stuck with the most down-to-earth and unemotional man in the two realms, freezing, while a kitten meowed.

Wait.

A kitten?

There was a small striped mini-tiger on the railing in front of him, peeking adorably through the decorative rosebushes, big eyes begging for something – a treat or maybe a cuddle. He had barely registered it when it was scooped into Kratos' hands, where it meowed and shook itself and glared at this stranger that did not seem to understand that he had been interrupting something very important.

"Oops. Sorry. I guess you really meant it." Something in him cried out at how mundane the sentence sounded – the star-bright internsity of before was rapidly fading.

"You were correct, actually. It's only that no one else could be spared. As I said, everyone is occupied."

"Even Regal? Presea? Colette herself loves cats, how could she.." he trailed of when Kratos looked at him blankly. Lloyd despaired silently – even after so long, Kratos had never even bothered to become friends with any of them. He knew none of their habits, their quirks, was ultimately stranger to the odd intimacies friendship allowed, and tension built at an inivisible but painful speed when he was around.

That's why he's the one chasing after the kitten, the young swordsman mused. Without even thinking it, they needed him out from underfoot.

He realised a few seconds has passed when Kratos commented, "You should be coming in soon, Lloyd. It's cold, and Colette will worry about you, which would make her cold worse." Oh yes, now he remembered, Colette had fallen slightly ill, her cheeks flushing unnaturally, her smile growing a bit pained, and Refille – ever the mother-hen – had insisted she stay inside.

That was why she hadn't come out. Maybe the small revelations of love were still his to believe in.

But Kratos was at the door, back to him with his shoulders straight and his profile strict and as sharp as starlight, and he didn't know how to keep the memories the way Colette did. The balcony was made of nondescript white brick, and the decorative rosebushes some housewife's pet project. The kitten meowed then purred in the angel's hands, cushioned by white gloves, unaware that the fingers that played with its fur had spilled the blood of thousands and sliced away a beloved one's heart. Behind his eyes, Lloyd watched the blood spill, and his ribcage was suddenly too small for his need, the desire to whisper the word "suki" into eyes blue like the sea. His whole self, too tiny a container.

"Kratos!"

After that first cry, words came stumbling down his mind out his throat without censure, without any sort of prearranged language. His lips moved, his throat undulated, and it felt like a layer of ice sperating heart from brain was being cracked by the powerful synapses of awareness. For all that, he still sounded sane, calm, even warm and companiable.

He wanted to talk to somebody. It didn't have to be Colette, now, even though she was always first choice in his heart. He wished for her gift with the mundane ways of 'expressing exactly how beloved you are.'

"Have you ever, like, really wanted a person to be with you?" And then from there, months and years worth of loving.

"Are you talking about Colette, Lloyd?"

If he had been with Regal or Presea, they would have listened in silence, somehow managing to stand tall in the dimmest of light, to be unaffected by the most playful of snowflakes. Perhaps Regal would have had earthly wisdom to share, Presea an innocent perception. Zelloss would have talked at length, foolish mask hiding mature understanding, of his duty to his "hunny," crouched in flamboyant terms and effusive airs. Pouncing onto Colette's side, Sheena would have berated him, claimed that he should treat his girl with more care. Genius would have teased him, then, as youthful passion warrants, tried to draw contrasts between their situations, (nowadays, the axe-girl's heart was always first place with him,) while his sister's eyes would have sharpened, her intelligence becoming his guide to acceptance even as she would calmly take the news in.

Kratos would…

They had all known how and in what way Colette and him loved, and they all accepted it and incorporated it into their tightly-woven patchwork of interpersonal relationships. It was no longer new, not to them or even to him, in most moments. It's just that sometimes he smelled the grass in the air or saw the stars in the sky and marveled. He did not know anyone besides Colette, his beloved Colette, who could experience that rapture – for him, by him, with him.

"Lloyd?" Hands were clasping his shoulders, taut with sudden expression. How long had he been talking? And what had he said? And now?

The red fabric in front of him was foreign as the marbled tiles, and he felt with acute sweetness the world's motion building up while he stood still, devoted to a single moment The ice on his voice had cracked to stabbing, clear pain, and he was speaking, his tone level and slow but his words somehow imbued with fire of their own. "I was suddenly so.. so aware.. that it was like that, as it had always been. But then.."

With the grip on his sides, firm and real, he could say it.

_Colette, I… – _

His throat suddenly stopped spasming with uneccessary words, breath puffing in little white clouds against a blue jacket. Lips rested in an unintentional feather kiss against a shoulder-guard as he tasted the biting cold. The sharp bursts in his head were dulled, and his heart's pounding was no longer a throbbing, frantic beat of desperation.

"Yes, Lloyd. You love her."

Kratos was not the kind of father who would tease Lloyd good-naturedly about crushes or blushes. Never the kind of father to ask his son to have a drink with him on late nights. Not a father who cradled his son when he was young or made him a wooden practice sword when he reached the age of ten. He had never been father enough to do those things or even to learn them now, at this late date – his Seraphim's wings had sliced away Lloyd's place in those memories. Kratos was now a person he hesitated to call 'friend,' having been badly burned by those assumptions – he considered him a comrade, and owed him a debt, but the line had been drawn there.

But the embrace was enough for Lloyd to forget that for one moment – the confrontations, the utter impersonality of their relations, the fact that the only father Lloyd knew was shorter than him and still waiting somewhere in his hometown. The comfort of padded armor and that deep voice, heard as a rumble against his cheek, was more than acceptance. It was its own embrace.

Kratos would know – had known, instinctively, how to engrave those poigant seconds into his heart. He would remember this forever.

No, not in Colette's way. Colette had known what love would demand of her the moment she started loving. She had lived this moment in its entirety her whole life. That had been why she had been able to accept it so simply – her heart was wide enough for both their worlds. Her life would be long enough for a thousand similar moments. She was not human, after all. He was, very much so, and very much given into rushing headlong into love. For her. For every one of his friends. And for this person who held him so close now, who had taught him his own way of remembering, the way a father should.

He curled his own arms around sword belts and heavy coats, felt his shoulders lean heavily into the other's chest, his face buried in locks of messy brown hair exactly the same shade as his own. His eyes shut, and this time when the tears came they did not freeze in the chill air, and his voice was strained by a half-sob. A cloth-wrapped hand reached to cradle his head close, and his tears traced a path down another's cheek.

_Thanks, Dad._

Did anyone understand that? Was it even remotely coherent? Is anyone still here, reading this?


End file.
